The reason I was saying +2 instead of +1 for damage beyond the track is that damage before and after the end of your health track has the same severity, which is...a little wonky. Possibly +1 for bashing, +2 for lethal, +3 for agg beyond the end of the health track?

I feel like anything other than +1 will get too high too fast. Once you've gone beyond your health track you're already getting the 9/8A on the injury test and I don't see dropping into shock as being good for survival.

High Stamina has the benefit that you don't get pain penalties, tests against shock, and 9A on the injury test as soon and the penalties will be lower, damage for damage.

Now if you're talking after getting hit by Dr Brown a few times and up around 20 damage? They'll both be on 20, 9A for the injury test but then they have taken the same amount of damage. If we're comparing the toughest mortal in the world (11 health, Iron Stamina 3) it was only one health level ago that they stopped being better off than anyone else in terms of wound penalties as 19 is where they would finally cap out at -5 from pain. Up to that point they would suffer less wound penalties and, when combined with the higher Stamina for not falling in shock, would be able to keep active thru larger amounts of damage than anyone else.

No game system is going to perfectly model reality. I for one am happy to let Stamina be one's ability to keep going despite damage rather than one's ability to shrug off damage entirely.

The issue I have is that nothing, no stat, merit, whatever, helps someone with dealing wounds they incur from damage. Stamina, with this change, loses a lot of its value, as it's no longer the cutoff point of "you can no longer act". Then, to have it do nothing to help you survive/mitigate wounds from your damage? It makes crippling injuries a complete roulette wheel, with no basis on how physically fit or sturdy (even with supernatural resilience) the person is.

"Well, you took only one bashing, and you're a wyrd 10 arcadian body stamina broadback summer courtier elemental, but you happened to draw three tens. That's six successes, which is enough to kill you. No, it doesn't matter that you built your entire concept around being resilient and impossible to take down. No, it doesn't matter that you have 26 health levels and a pool of 13 for straight stamina draws. There's nothing you can do about it."

I think you're confusing luck (I walked thru the bunker without even getting hit once) and stamina (I got hit three times but still walked out despite the broken flesh). Besides, bumping up to +2 for each point past the health track just gets us up into high 20 vs 30 levels where the difference barely matters.

Two ideas occur to me.

One) We get rid of health dots entirely and say that for every Stamina damage taken you get +2 to the injury test and -1 pain. You start testing against Shock after x iterations of this (Stamina? Resolve?) or something like that. That way higher Stamina is always better and we have an even rate of increase instead of running up and then hitting a wall. It would let high Stamina characters take allot of damage.

Two) I want to unify injury between this and called shots. If Stamina were incorporated there in a way that doesn't make high Stamina nigh unbreakable but dose give it an advantage then 5 successes would be worse for the Stamina 1 guy even if it's still nigh deadly for the Stamina 5 guy. I'll probably do another thread for that soon.

No, I very much understand it's a luck issue. I'm saying I don't like the idea that every time anyone takes any sort of injury, no matter how minor, no matter what they are, from the most frail, disease-ridden, brittle-boned cripple geezer human to a conceptual creature that is in fact the land itself to an undead monstrosity stitched together from body parts and impossible to kill, gives them all the same 1/1000 chance to die at the end of the scene.

And yes, the bumping it up to +2 doesn't really fix anything, the pool's still to high and variable.

I think both of your ideas have some good parts to them, but need more fleshing. Thinking specifically on the first one, if they took 5 damage they'd be looking at an injury pool of 15 (5 for the damage, +10 for wrapping 5 times). That's really high really quick.

EDIT: Sorry, I should really do more explanatory maths. With option one, that gives each point of damage for each stamina level...stamina 1: each point of damage = +3 to crippled injurystamina 2 = 2stamina 3 = 1.666stamina 4 = 1.5stamina 5 = 1.4etc...

Er, I meant the injury test would just equal 2 per Stamina damage taken, not damage +2 per Stamina. Probably add 1 for a partially filled set of Stamina. So with 5 damage Stamina 1 guy would be on a injury pool of 1 (Stamina filled 5 times for +2 each) and Stamina 5 guy would be on a pool of 2 (filled once at +2). Stamina 6 changeling would be on 1 (partially filled Stamina).I think this would keep pools more reasonable and satisfy your desire for a more linear approach.

I dislike most of the no-10-again mechanics because I really like the possibly of explosion. Curses get a pass because they are specifically screwing up luck. Otherwise there should be a chance of, in this case, even a minor fall resulting in a deadly concussion. Besides, you're complaining about the 1/1000 chance that one Bashing could get 6 Successes on the injury test and the player/ST choose to interpreted it as one deadly concussion (Agg to the brain) instead of a minor Concussion (Bashing to the brain) and a broken arm. I like that it can be deadly but in actual play if a PC did draw that much I'd defiantly discuss the situation with the player. "It could be a good time to bow the character out but if you want to keep them then it could just be a few lesser injuries." So it's really more like a 1/1000 chance that NPC's will die from 1 Bashing. Probably not quite true to reality but probably as close as any of the other odds in the game.